Pro Techniques

In today’s world, stock photos often sell for pennies, yet there are still photographers out there making a good living selling work for a good price. By talking with stock shooter Bill Bachmann, I found out that I, and most of my portrait/wedding brethren, have been missing the boat big time by not using our client images for stock images. According to Bachmann, we’re sitting on a gold mine and...

Some of the best photography is in the worst weather!” I’ve been saying that for decades and it comes from coming in from the cold, soaking wet and thrilled to death with the images I captured. The drama in the light, clouds and the response to it by nature is a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle you just can’t duplicate. In order to see it and photograph it, you have to get out in it and be able to work. And that’s where the challenge lies.

Well, it’s really only one city—New York—but the assignment called for Jon Ortner to capture images so different in spirit and approach that he might as well have been in two very different cities.
There was not only a dual nature to the job itself but also something of a split personality to the building Jon was hired by developer J.D. Carlisle to photograph. Located between 29th and 30th Streets on Sixth Avenue, the 54-story structure in fact has two names and natures: from the street to the 25th floor it’s the Eventi Hotel; at the 26th floor it becomes the Beatrice and rental apartments.

The camera Michael carries might be his Leica M6, loaded with either Ilford XP-2 or Kodak BW400CN chromogenic film and fitted with either a 35mm f/2 or 50mm f/2 Summicron lens; or his Fuji X10 point-and-shoot with its zoom lens set for the equivalent of 50mm; or his Nikon D200 or D700 with the manual 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor lens he got with his F3 back when he was in college.

Much of my portrait and fashion photography is done on location, but living in a place like Colorado the models (and the photographer, too) just aren’t always in the mood to stomp around in the cold weather and snow. That’s when a studio comes in handy. Some photographers just prefer having complete control over the lighting. Instead of the hassle and cost of renting a studio, why not...

Sunstars are a great way to fill an otherwise boring, cloudless blue sky with a feeling of drama and excitement. They are often a way to add a compositional element that helps draw a viewer into a scene. Technically, any light source can create a “sunstar” as long as it is a tiny point of light and the camera is set correctly. We often see the star effect in shots of buildings with their lights twinkling at dusk, or the moon in the night sky. Most commonly we see star patterns when the sun is setting on the horizon, but in this case we only see half of the sunstar because the other half is being blocked by the horizon.

Dear Mr. King,When I saw Chris Alvanas’s HDR (High Dynamic Range) photographs, my first thought was, they could be covers of Stephen King novels. They held mystery and more than a hint of menace; they suggested a story that would keep me turning pages long into the night.

There’s nothing more discouraging than making great shots in the field only to discover that they are nowhere to be found on your memory card when you get to your home or studio. That’s why we were happy to receive this list of mistakes to avoid when dealing with memory cards from David Zimmerman, CEO of LC Technology, a company that supplies data management and recovery solutions to a wide variety of companies within the field.—Editor

An exposed photographic plate or a segment of exposed film inside a dark camera body are analog equivalents of today’s Raw file. Before digital technology made it possible to capture visual images electronically, a photograph was visible only after it had been processed in a darkroom with chemicals. Now the processing is handled either in camera or by Raw rendering software. The word “Raw” is not an acronym; it’s a simple description for a file that contains pure data, invisible to the human eye.

Many photographers will walk out the door for a portrait shoot with little more than a camera and a reflector. They do so based on the common belief that flash photography is meant exclusively for indoor shooting, that flash is only used when there isn’t enough light to achieve a perfect exposure. However, based on my experience, a flash combined with a few affordable accessories has tremendous...

Although we tend to take them for granted, batteries are an integral part of photography. Virtually every camera developed in the last 10 years becomes merely a paperweight without voltage to keep its mechanisms ticking. Unlike the previous generation which required power for little more than...

Given that the physical and perceptual experience of making a photograph is shaped by technology, and that technology is also embedded in the resulting images, one of the chief and perhaps most profound changes in how we make an image has been the changes in focusing—and recently autofocusing—technology. There’s a reason that the documentary photojournalism of Lewis W. Hine (shot with a ponderous 5x7 view camera or a 4x5 Graflex SLR) has a qualitatively different feel from that of Alfred Eisenstaedt or Henri Cartier-Bresson (shot with pocket-sized 35mm rangefinder cameras). It’s not only framing—it’s responsiveness, spontaneity, and, perhaps, repose, that underlies what these image-makers showed us.

In recent years, “posing” has made a big comeback thanks in part to the deluge of photo enthusiasts with decent, affordable equipment who have swelled the ranks of wedding photographers to the point of bursting. This situation isn’t likely to change any time soon, so smart photographers have been buying books and videos and attending workshops and conventions to learn how to properly pose people...

Anyone who's watched Mark Steines co-anchor Entertainment Tonight knows he's remarkably at ease in front of the camera. Thing is, he may be even more comfortable behind it, especially if that camera is his digital SLR.

Travel photographers are a unique breed. Some go to the ends of the earth to get pictures that tell a story of a faraway land. Others stay relatively close to home, documenting the pulse of a major metropolitan city--which might be a travel destination to...